


Who Watches the Watchmen?

by mysterioussinkhole



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon divergent- alternate end to season 3, Flangst?, Fluff and Angst, Freaky Beholding powers, Gertrude Robinson’s Organizational skills, Guilt, Imprisonment, Martin’s relationship with his mother, Non-canon disabled character, Slow Burn, addiction mention, ship is not the most prominent thing but it is a thing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-15 20:02:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16070294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysterioussinkhole/pseuds/mysterioussinkhole
Summary: The Archives are significantly altered by the events at the Wax Museum and the Mutiny. But life goes on.





	1. Chapter 1

Jon wheeled himself into the Archives and looked around from his new vantage point. He’d never taken an elevator down to the Basement Level before, but stairs were hardly an option now no matter how much more dependable they were. There was still some uncertainty on whether he’d ever be able to go back to using the stairs, but he tried not to let his mind drift in that direction. For now, he was more concerned with restoring order.  
He did a mental checklist of what would be necessary to get things “back to normal”.  
1\. Burned statements would need to be documented.  
2\. Avoid Elias at all costs.  
3\. Do a sweep around the Archives to see if anything was notably amiss.  
4\. Check locks and sabotage traps.  
(As he thought more about it, Jon realized he probably should have gotten rid of his sabotage traps a while ago but he couldn’t feel safe without them anymore.)  
5\. Gather remaining assistants.  
And suddenly his mind was spiraling into another checklist.  
\- Subject: Martin, Status: Alive, Feelings: Happiness? Complicated.  
\- Subject: Tim, Status: Deceased, Feelings: Sadness. Anger. Guilt.  
\- Subject: Melanie, Status: Unknown, Feelings: Fear. Disappointment?  
\- Subject: Basira, Status: Alive, Feelings: Admiration.  
\- Subject: Daisy, Status: Unknown, Feelings: Fear.  
He was down to two people. Or even just one now that Basira wasn’t being used to leverage Daisy. Or was she? Too many questions. He needed to do a statement, something to calm the buzz of uncertainty that obscured his thoughts.  
6\. Add new information to the Pepe Silvia board.  
That’s what Tim had called it back when he had started connecting places, names, events, and beings with bits of red string on the wall of his office. Jon didn’t entirely get the reference but he was sure it wasn’t flattering. He was thinking about Tim again.  
“I don’t forgive you.”  
Jon kept moving, trying to locate a statement that gave him that deep-seated feeling he couldn’t equivocate. Just the word, “This.” He had started to get a sense for the chaos of Gertrude’s organization. The disarray was strategic. If the system made sense then that made the collection more powerful and let the Beholding grip tighter onto this plane. This had never been explained to him but he Knew; that way he always seemed to be Knowing these days.  
He went to the last place he had found a valid statement and then wheeled as far away as possible within the Archives. Powerful things needed to be kept separate, he imagined Gertrude saying. He was so deep in thought he nearly went right past Martin. He was leaned against a shelf, skimming through a file. When Jon spoke, Martin flinched in surprise.  
“You cut your hair.”  
Martin looked at him for a moment like there were too many things to take in at once. He said, “Er, yeah. I just didn’t want to... Are you alright?”  
“No. I don’t think any of us are,” he answered honestly.  
“Oh.”  
Awkward silence enveloped them, neither sure how to naturally say what was on their minds. Their conversations often came to stuttering halts like that. They wanted to keep each other around but were unsure how that was accomplished. Martin gave up on convention first.  
“Did you listen to the tapes I left with you?” burst out of his mouth before he could talk himself out of asking.  
Jon said, “Yes,” in the tone of someone who is answering a different question than the one that was asked. He pushed himself closer to Martin and turned to look him directly in the face.  
“I am so sorry that you had to go through that. If I had known... It’s my-“  
“Don’t.”  
“Sorry?”  
Martin’s face went red. “Don’t say it’s all your fault. You always do that. You take on every bad thing that happens around you, except the things that are actually your fault, like it justifies how bad you feel about yourself. I am my own person, Jon. A-And regardless of how I feel about you,” he went a couple shades darker. “I decided what to do. Was it awful? Yes. Do I wish it had never happened? Yes. But it’s my problem to deal with.”  
The words hit Jon like an epiphany. He had never considered how taking on guilt affected the people around him. It always seemed like they agreed with him.  
“I just don’t want you to have to feel it all,” he said. He had no better way to put it. Martin seemed to shrink back into himself. There had been a shift between them somewhere along the way and Jon had missed it completely.  
“Do you... want to talk about it?” Jon asked, his eyes unwilling to meet Martin’s.  
There was a beat.  
“Not right now,” he said and Jon’s face fell further. “But maybe sometime soon.”  
“Al-Alright. Um, what have you got there?”  
Martin looked up from the file he had just started to re-examine.  
“It’s- ah, well, I didn’t think you’d be coming today so I thought I might do a statement. Keep things running.”  
“Oh. I could- No. That’s fine. You... you do that,” and Jon started off for his office, desperate to get as far away from his own awkwardness as possible. When did Martin get so intimidating? His face felt strange and he didn’t like it.

* * *

He spent most of the day running through items on his checklist, mostly on expanding the red web on his wall. His main goal for the day, he told himself, was to assemble a rough order of upcoming rituals. What was close and what was centuries away. The process was slow and it was easy to get sidetracked. Somewhere along the way he fished a tape that Martin had given to him out of his bag. Martin had visited Jon in the hospital a few times, though Jon hardly remembered thanks to the painkillers, and had left him with five tapes and a small succulent to keep him company. The tapes were the three that Martin and Melanie had stolen from Elias, the recording of what they went through to get them, and the last one was simply labeled: FOR JON. That tape was music, mostly songs Jon had never heard before. He’d listened to it eight times by the time he was allowed to go home.  
Jon was not in the habit of relistening to things, but putting it on now gave him a sense of calm. He felt more secure in his own existence; someone had listened to these songs and thought of him.  
He was puzzling over the recorded frequency of Hunt-related incidents when Martin poked his head in the door. His eyes went wider as he realized what was playing. He smiled. Jon smiled back at him.  
“Did you need something?”  
“Oh, yeah. I just finished that statement and I was wondering if you wanted me to put the paper copy back where it was shelved or somewhere else. I’m not really sure what sort of system we’re going off now, I’ve sort of been organizing them by power...” He shuffled further into the office as he spoke.  
“Is that what those symbols are? I noticed them stamped here and there- I’m not sure organizing them at all is a good idea,” a sudden realization snapped into place in Jon’s head. “How long have you been back? At work, I mean.”  
“Erm,” Martin thought for a moment.  
“Three weeks.”  
“What so you just went right back to work? After everything that happened?!”  
“I couldn’t very well just sit there and wait for things to get better! We were going to have to come back sometime. I just wanted to get it over with.”  
Martin was pacing a little, a nervous tic Jon had never picked up on.  
“Wait. How many statements have you done?” Jon asked.  
“Fifteen.”  
There was no hesitation in his voice. Jon’s head spun. That was five a week, more than he ever remembered doing in that space of time. That kind of exposure... Jon pushed himself towards his assistant and said, “Ask me something. Anything.”  
Martin shifted his weight. “Uh... Did you name the plant?”  
“No,” Jon lied, and he let out a small sigh of relief. “That’s a lie. It’s called Harold. I wanted to see if you could compel me.”  
“Ok...” his face was conflicted. Jon was unsure what emotions were fighting each other. All the same he felt less worried. He asked Martin to put together a list of the statements he’d recorded so he could redistribute them accordingly, but was surprised when he simply rattled off the case numbers from memory.  
“You- you memorized the case numbers?” Jon asked haltingly. Martin looked surprised at himself as well.  
“What were the statement givers’ names?”  
“Dan Mizuno, Charlie Carver, Muna Salib, Olufemi Attah, Private Isaac Bell, Rosario Ibañez, Jim Crick, Cecilie Starosta, Lorenzo Angeles, Ty Hoover, Lola Arnold, Rangi Taa, Nicole Barnes, and Milo Breitner... What the hell? How do I know that? Jon, how do I know that?!” He had started up pacing again, hard lines of worry appearing on his face.  
“I-I take it you haven’t had an eidetic memory this whole time?” Jon asked. His internal monologue was descending into incomprehensible screaming.  
“No!”  
“Isaac Bell. Give me his statement.”  
And he did. He didn’t stumble over a single detail, slipping perfectly into the soldier’s voice. Later Jon would find the written statement and see that he’d gotten it word for word. As he finished, Martin looked like he was about to pass out. He fell back into Jon’s office chair and stared at nothing. His only words for the next few hours were: “Well, fuck.”


	2. Lock-In

Martin was having a bit of a day. Although, the same could be said of most of his life. This particular day involved camping out in a panic room with his boss(?), whom he had a raging crush on, and trying to ignore his newly discovered encyclopedia brain. The brain thing had been a day of its own. He and Jon had tested his limits tentatively and discovered that his recall of statements he had personally recorded was exact but that did not extend to statements recorded by others. He’d spent that night desperately choking back panic attacks. This one was... not dissimilar in all honesty.  
The situation arose in much the same manner that any mess arises; unfortunately. Martin had been growing concerned that Jon’s return had gotten no reaction out of Elias. It’s not that he wanted to see Elias after what that man had put him through, but his complete absence created a general atmosphere of unease. The only sign he still came in for work was the line of light that leaked out from under his office door. Now that he thought about it, Martin wasn’t sure Elias didn’t actually live in the Archives. He’d ask Jon about it if he didn’t think he’d get The Look. The Look was a face that communicated, through instinctive positioning of the mouth, eyes, eyebrows, etc., that someone had just said or done something profoundly stupid. He felt that over time the expression had grown both more withering and more attractive. A double-edged sword.  
Instead, he asked, “Have you changed the locks on the safe room?”  
“What?” Jon looked up from his laptop. They were working together quietly in Jon’s office that evening, a habit that developed out of their new isolation in the lower levels of the Institute.  
“Yeah, it locks from the outside now. I noticed it this morning. Was it you?”  
His face looked quizzical. Then it took a turn towards panic. Jon began to roll out of his office and down the hall leaving Martin trailing behind him. Before the explosion at the Wax Museum, Martin had no trouble keeping up with him, due to the fact that he was a good 23 centimeters taller, but with the wheelchair Jon saw no reason to adhere to a speed limit. The locks were just as he had said. Jon toyed with them, trying to make sense of the change.  
“Should we... check inside?”  
Jon gave him The Look. Some muscle in Martin’s chest tightened and he felt a bit light-headed.  
“That’s how you get locked in and die of oxygen deprivation.”  
“I’m pretty sure it’s got ventilation—“  
“Yes, but that’s beside the point,” he moved slightly into the safe room, leaving the door ajar. “Look if we went in and somebody shut the door behind us we’d be—“ he glanced at something further inside.  
“What the hell is that doing in here?”  
Jon wheeled to an unseen corner, so Martin followed. The new mystery dragged his brain away from logic, a strange but prominent part of him suddenly starving for answers. What sat in the corner was his old cot and a stack of files which Jon immediately started rifling through.  
“I haven’t seen these, at least I don’t think. Why would someone—“ There was the sound of a heavy door shutting. And then a solid click. They were actually idiots. Martin slowly turned to see a note posted on a small window on the door. He read it aloud,  
“Gentlemen,  
There has been a threat leveled against the Beholding. Specifically, against the two of you. I will explain more once it has been dealt with. This is for your own protection. Hopefully, you’ll be free to go in the morning.  
Stay put,  
Elias Bouchard”  
“I might actually kill him,” Jon said with his head in his hands.  
“I’ll help.”  
“I can’t believe he used statements— does he think— like a rat trap,” Jon spluttered. Martin squashed down his own indignation and sat down on the cot. This was a thing that was happening. Ok. He said, “Probably best not to freak out. There’s nothing we can do. We just have to sit here,” his voice wavered.  
“And—and let this play out.”  
They sat for an hour or so of muffled anxiety paging through files, most of them ridiculous stories of zombies and phantasms, both painfully aware of their own silence. At one point, Martin loudly remembered he had a cellphone and then proceeded to encounter the problem of the Institute’s famously spotty cell reception. A condition worsened by the a secure room. He also realized they would probably have to sleep at some point. If they even could with an apparent threat hanging over their heads.  
“Do you think it was Melanie?” Jon asked suddenly, as though reading his mind. Wait, could he..?  
“God, I hope not.”  
The last time he’d seen Melanie she had been covered in someone else’s blood and laughing. She had smiled at him as though he should be happy too. A deep shudder ran through him. He mustn’t think of Melanie. Mustn’t thinkCASE #9991709 SARAH RUSSELL: YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE HOW MUCH BLOOD I’VE SEEN IN MY LIFE. I KNOW THE SMELL OF IT LIKE A SHARK WOULD...  
Martin groaned and rubbed the palm of his hand into his eye, hoping to relieve the sudden pressure. He heard Jon’s voice ask if he was alright.  
“Headache,” he managed. “It’s either the magic memory bank or I need new glasses.”  
He heard some movement and then a hand move his own away from his face while another removed his glasses. A hazy Jon was trying on his large, round spectacles.  
“Wow, you are blind.”  
Martin laughed in spite of himself, and judging by Jon’s grin that had been the goal. He took Jon’s discarded glasses from him and put them on. Jon was still hazy, but slightly bigger.  
“This looks wrong. Like, viscerally wrong.”  
They quickly switched back, grinning at each other like the idiots they were. Jon scooted a little closer to the cot, asking, “Do you mind if I join you?”  
“Do you need help?” Martin was already moving to assist him.  
“No, I’ll just wriggle a bit and fix my spine.”  
He rolled his eyes at the Archivist and carefully looped an arm around him and put a steadying hand on his waist as he helped him stand upright and pivot to sit down. Jon leaned against him and he fought to stay focused.  
“How do you know how to... Oh.”  
“Spent most of my life helping my mum in and out of places. It’s alright. You’re much nicer than she is.”  
“I find that hard to imagine.”  
“You’d be surprised,” Martin said as he settled next to him, both of them leaning back against the wall. “I actually sort of wanted to be a nurse when I was younger. I like helping people.”  
“A nurse? Why not a doctor?”  
“The idea of cutting people open was a bit too intimidating for me.”  
Jon smiled softly, an uncommon expression for him. His left side was touching Martin’s right side, who was having to remind himself to breathe. He asked, “What about you? What did you want to do?”  
“It kept changing,” he responded. “All the tests I took said I should be a teacher but then I’d just be stuck teaching the same things year after year. For a while I thought I’d like to be an anthropologist. Learn all the stories lost to time.”  
“That sounds lovely.”  
The quiet they fell into was much more comfortable now. Every now and then they’d trade stories and jokes but for the most part they ignored their entrapment and tried not to think of anything but each other. At least, that’s how Martin liked to imagine it. This carried on until Jon turned his head slightly and asked, “Can I ask you what you see in me?”  
Martin’s blood froze, a refusal already rising in his throat, but he pushed it down. It had to happen sometime. So he said, “I see someone who still cares even when he has every reason not to. I see someone intelligent and incredible. And I also see someone who’s scared. I guess... I guess you’re just my type.”  
He attempted a nonchalant shrug but it ended up as more of a defeated sigh.  
“Do you... see anything in me?”  
He couldn’t look at Jon. He could feel his face going very, very red. A hand touched his face nervously and turned it to look Jon in the eyes. Jon was fighting to get his words out.  
“Martin. I’m not predisposed to... romantic things. I don’t really...” He took a deep breath. “I—I think you are kind and good and you are the only person I can really speak honestly with. I don’t know what it is but you make things calmer. Easier to process. These past few months... I keep finding myself wishing you were with me when you’re not around. I want to see you happy. I—“ he pauses. Martin could see him make a mental decision.  
“I want to be happy with you, if that’s possible.”  
“Of course it is.”  
They looked at each other for a moment, taking in what had just occurred. Then, slowly, Jon leaned over and pressed a kiss to Martin’s cheek. Every neuron in his brain fired at once and he was quite sure his face assumes an embarrassing expression, but it didn’t matter. This was fucking happening. Holy shit.

***

Martin woke up the next morning to find that:  
A) They’d fallen asleep at some point.  
B) Jon had his head rested on Martin’s shoulder. He twitched a little in his sleep.  
C) The door was open.  
D) He was bloody starving.  
When Jon woke up, a moment of inexplicable fear before he realized where he was, they decided they’d go for breakfast. Chat about... them. Martin liked the idea that there was a “them” now. That had been the plan. But as they made for the Magnus Institute’s main exit, they can upon a familiar face entering the building.  
“I need your help,” Basira said bluntly, and she held out a book.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This for all you people on the dinghy. Thank you so much for all the comments on the last chapter! More to come soon.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, this week has been crazy and exhausting and I haven’t had time to write another full chapter. I didn’t want to leave you with nothing, though, so here’s a little bit of Martin’s poetry.

In my dreams at night what am I?  
A new soul for a watching sky.  
Something keeps knocking at my door,  
Small things skittering on my floor  
Under the gaze of that great Eye.

There’s someone sitting to the side  
Compelling me to run and hide,  
But I have nowhere else to flee.  
I’m trapped, this is the end for me  
And someone’s eyes are going wide.

Concern won’t stop the Hell I’m in.  
I’ll die with worms inside my skin.  
Every night those eyes will peer  
And do nothing to help, I fear.  
There’s no rest when the dreams begin.


	4. Chapter 4

The Magnus Institute was a necessary evil, Basira had decided. That decision came after a decent amount of denial, anger, depression, and bargaining, but the acceptance was finally here. She didn’t mind relying on others, really. Her problem was with the ulterior motives of the place. The Eye could seem practically friendly in comparison to the other powers at work in the world but she refused to let herself forget the creeping dread she had felt every day she’d worked in its stronghold. The constant sensation of many eyes boring into your skull from all directions, viewing your thoughts and stories with impunity.  
It was that selfish thirst for knowledge that she required. They guarded information, especially information with a bookplate reading “FROM THE LIBRARY OF JURGEN LEITNER”, savagely from the outside world. The Archives were a dragon’s horde and she was currently in need of a dragon.  
Bumping into Jon and Martin so early had seemed fortunate (Though she had been quick to note that they were about to leave when she entered. Another all-nighter?) until Jon started insisting she give a statement. She’d anticipated as much, sure, but it still unnerved her to see the hungry look on his face. It reminded her of drug addicts she’d encountered during her years with the police. They had the same mix of unrestrained hope and repressed fear for themselves. Yes, Jon was an addict, with the added danger of unfettered access to his drug of choice. She’d prepared a litany of refusals and excuses but ended up simply saying, “No.”  
“Why not?” Jon asked, an amusing look of betrayal clouding his face. Of course he would take it personally. Basira took a deep breath and began to explain.  
“I’m not feeding that thing, ok? Look I’m giving you something powerful already. I don’t want to give you anything more than that. It... it freaks me out. I’ve had enough of you poking around in my head. Pulling things out of me against my will.”  
She paused a moment and realized what was happening. The scathing glare she gave him did little to level the playing field, but she did enjoy how he shrunk back. As an added bonus, Martin punched his arm lightly and told him off. The admonishment had no real teeth to it but she appreciated the gesture.  
She and Martin had barely been friends when she “worked” in the Archives, she disliked his habit of laying claim to people and ideas that weren’t his to possess, but joint suffering had brought them to an understanding. It wasn’t necessarily respect but rather acknowledgement of each other as full human beings. Jon was not a full human being, in her eyes. He was sympathetic and funny at times, but he had unmoored himself from humanity long ago and was steadily drifting further away. There was something in the way he asked you questions that forced the answers out of you regardless of what you meant to say. It was at the very least unpleasant and at the most traumatic. And he wasn’t even the most powerful person in that building. She didn’t want to think about that.  
It had been difficult to resist looking through the book on her way to the Institute, and even now as they trekked down to storage she had the nagging urge to open it. What could be in there that justified its inclusion in Leitner’s collection? The thing looked about fifty years old with a battered paper cover and yellowing pages. The cover had no author on it, only the title “A Day in the Life” and an old-fashioned illustration of a grinning white woman. It had the appearance of a trash novel from the 60’s except for the expression on the woman’s face. The grin struck her as false, and something in the eyes seemed pained. Her eyebrows raised too high.  
She didn’t know how Daisy had gotten her hands on it. She was there in Basira’s flat the night before when she returned home, hiding in the shadows like a proper ghost. Not one for wasting time, she placed it on the kitchen table, said, “Keep it safe. I’ve got a plan,” and kissed her gently before leaving. Cryptic as ever. God, she missed her.  
Basira attempted to explain it to the two of them but Daisy was the kind of person who it took time and effort to comprehend. Jon and Martin exchanged a weird glance. Jon appeared to begin to ask something when Martin nudged him a bit. They had some sort of mental dialogue before Martin finally asked, “Did she, um... Did she say what that plan was, exactly? Did it have anything to do with us?”  
“She didn’t say. I figured this would be the safest place to leave it. I’ve seen the sort of stuff you keep in storage,” she paused for a moment. “I can feel how something about it is off and I don’t want to keep it with me. I’ve read about how dangerous these books can be.”  
They’d reached storage. To an outsider, the reinforced steel door and massive padlock seemed like overkill for a research institution. In actuality it was probably negligent. Basira had gone in twice before and was not eager to see the inside of that room again. But sometimes you just had to swallow your feelings and deal with the situation. The illustration’s eyes kept catching hers.  
She wasn’t sure what she expected when Martin pulled the door open. A swarm of bats, maybe? A slow, laborious journey into the depths? Definitely not Jon winding up and pitching the book as far as he could into the darkened cavern of a room. The book sailed into the gloom and out of sight as Martin hastily began pushing the door shut again. Just before the lock clicked back in place she could swear she heard a faint screech. Both men were mildly out of breath after the last few seconds’ flurry of activity. Jon glanced back at her, apparently noting what must be a face of utter incomprehension, and admitted, “We’re trying a new organizational system.”  
Basira couldn’t keep herself from laughing. What the fuck even was her life? She had no job, the only person she cared about was never around, and here she was with her old coworkers throwing eldritch texts into abysses. She just had to shake her head and keep moving. They accompanied her back to the front door making inconsequential small talk about physical therapy and whether one could sue a fear-based entity.  
The air outside was beginning to cool, fall creeping into the leaves of nearby trees. She stuffed her hands into her pockets and gave the two of them a curt nod before heading off in the direction of her flat. The ease with which she had fallen back into her old life had shaken her. If something got a grip on you once did that mean it always had you? No, she wasn’t going to end up half mad like Jon or complacent like Martin. She cast a look back towards the Institute and noticed them heading off in the opposite direction. They were holding hands. About damn time those two—  
Her thoughts were abruptly cut off when she smashed into another pedestrian. The woman (early thirties, white, average height, thin blonde hair) apologized profusely, as though it had been her own fault.  
“Terribly sorry. God, I never watch where I’m going. I should—“ She had a nervous, fluttery manner that seemed to be rooted in more than a habit of self deprecation. Basira places a steadying hand on her shoulder and asked, “Are you alright?”  
The woman’s face crumpled. She said, “I-I’m looking for this place. The Magnus Institute? They say that’s where you go if you’ve got things you can’t really explain...”  
Basira made a decision.  
“I don’t think they’re open right now, but I can help you if you like. I know all about those sorts of things.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be several chapters so encouragement and harassment to write are appreciated. I cannot say with certainty what songs were on that tape, only that the percent of it that is The Mountain Goats is not zero.


End file.
